Electronic Coupling
by Sakon76
Summary: [G1 AU] Sometimes the one you want is the one you can't have. Written for the ProwlxJazz livejournal community's October challenge 'Fear' prompt.
1. Chapter 1

**Electronic Coupling**  
by K. Stonham  
released 27th October 2007

There had been crude jokes about the real meaning of "Special Operations" as far back as Academy days, but Prowl had seldom paid attention to them. She wasn't suited to that particular branch of service and focused her attention where she was best at: logic and tactics and strategy, working hard to learn, to improve, to distinguish herself. She hadn't squandered her interest on frivolous things the way so many others had, letting themselves get distracted. She couldn't _afford_ distraction; there was a war going on.

That, of course, was before she had met Jazz.

She'd let Smokescreen talk her into attending their graduation party on the basis that they might be working with any number of these people in the future, and it would be a good idea to actually _meet_ some of them, get ideas of their strengths and weaknesses, and for Primus' sake, Prowl, loosen up and have some _fun_ for once, it won't kill you!

She'd rolled her optics at that last, but given in, admitting just to herself that Smokescreen might have a point. And so she ended up standing against a wall, barely sipping at a cube of high-grade, watching her roommate mix and mingle and once in a while drag someone over for her to meet. Mostly femmes with a few mechs, the crowd was... vibrant. Fascinating. And noisy.

With a sigh, she drifted over to a door leading outside. Stars shimmered overhead, and she looked up at them, trying to calculate which of them might be spy satellites, and how great the danger of being outside, exposed like this, would be.

"Not the party type?" someone spoke low and sweet by her audials, causing Prowl to jump. "Relax, I'm on your side," the femme said with an easy smile, moving to lean against the railing beside Prowl. "Saw you leave the party," she said with a nod to the celebration still going on inside, "and noticed you hadn't drank much either. I was wondering if you were feeling okay?" Her voice was low and easy, comfortable to listen to.

"I'm fine," Prowl replied. "It's just not really my idea of a good time. My roommate convinced me to come."

"Is that so?" One optic ridge rose above the femme's blue visor as she looked back inside. "I've met everyone else, so... you're Smokescreen's roomie, then?" She held out a hand; Prowl took it. "I'm Jazz."

"Prowl," Prowl replied.

Jazz ran a finger along Prowl's chevron. "First in class," she commented. "Pretty good; what did you specialize in?"

"Strategy and tactics," Prowl replied.

Jazz nodded, looking impressed. "Tough field. So tell me," she invited, "what _is_ your idea of a 'good time'?"

Prowl blinked, unused to being asked. She wasn't sure if she was being hit on or not. "A quiet evening in, with some good music and a game or two of tech-chess," she replied.

Jazz snorted a little. "Good music's getting hard to find these days," she opined.

"War leaves little room for art," Prowl agreed. "And you? What did you specialize in?"

Jazz quirked a half-smile. "Sabotage. Demolitions, destruction, and mayhem. Maximum chaos with minimal chance of getting hurt or caught." She leaned a little closer, near enough that Prowl could feel their energy fields buzzing and entangling, trying to sync. For some reason, that thought made Prowl's fuel processors stutter. "If I asked if I could kiss you, would you say no?" she asked. When Prowl didn't answer after a minute, feeling like a turbo-fox caught in a hunter's sights, Jazz leaned in a little closer anyway and pressed their mouths together.

Prowl felt her energy field snapping and flaring, felt the spark in her laser core reach out, yearning, craving, for Jazz's, felt her air intakes start to stutter and fail. She'd never felt anything like it before. It was powerful. It was _terrifying_.

Jazz ended the soft kiss and drew back, her expression unreadable. She seemed... shaken, though. "...I won't touch anyone who's scared of me," she said finally, and turned to go back inside, passing Smokescreen in the doorway.

Smokescreen paused and looked at the beautiful retreating femme, then made her way over to Prowl. "Was that... you were with _Jazz_?" Smokescreen demanded incredulously. "Wow. Didn't know you had it in you, Prowl!"

Prowl blinked, feeling that she was missing a vital piece of information. "Should I know who Jazz is?" she asked her roommate.

"You don't--" Smokescreen started then stopped. She shook her head. "Of course not. Jazz is top graduate of the special ops division this year," she informed Prowl.

Prowl's processors stalled as she put together the things she really should have before. The beautiful, sensual femme... sabotage... special operations. With a sinking feeling in her laser core, she realized just what Jazz _did_, had been trained to do... had done to her, and been very, very good at.

"So, how was it?" Smokescreen was asking her.

Prowl blinked, refocusing on her roommate. "Nothing happened," she said softly. "We just talked. She wanted to know why I'd left the party." She looked at the almost full cube of high-grade still in her hand, and gave it to Smokescreen. "Here, you take this," she said. "I think I'm just going to go back to our room and lie down for a while. Maybe listen to some music, or read."

"But--" Smokescreen protested even as Prowl turned away and walked back out through the party. She caught a glimpse of Jazz on her way out, the saboteur now talking animatedly with a group of other femmes, including a few of the instructors. She wondered what they were talking about, but didn't have the spark to go join the conversation and find out. She left instead and went back to her dorm room, turning on the high, clear, melancholy singing of an opera from the Tai'Vau system. Prowl lay on her bunk, staring at her datapad and failing to read a word of it as her processors kept cycling the memory of the encounter with the beautiful, dangerous femme.

She had no way of knowing that Jazz's optics had followed her across the room as she had left the party.

* * *

Jazz proved to be as good at her job--either part of it--as Prowl was at hers. It wasn't a surprise, and so for vorns they kept coming into occasional contact with one another, two planets orbiting the same star. Eventually Prowl grew almost used to seeing the special ops agent seduce her way through Autobot ranks, going off with an officer here or a soldier there, somehow managing to never be the object of jealousy, only admiration and camaraderie. It was something she was... skilled at, holding that balance between friend and lover with so many.

Prowl knew how it worked, of course: the interface between two sparks was a moment of truth, of no holds barred intimacy. A femme or mech skilled enough, determined enough, could search their partner's emotion circuits and memory chips at that moment, extracting information through the blinding white light of pleasure. The members of the special ops division tended to have the mindset for that sort of task. Those with the right frame of mind were turned loose within the Autobot ranks in addition to their other duties. Socializing became a form of checks and balances, making sure the army didn't lose hope, or love, or belief in any of the things that they were fighting to protect from the Decepticons. Given that they were upfront about it, from officers down to enlisted, it was no secret, and no one was tricked into sharing their fears and worries. Those who chose not to spend intimate time with an special operations agent, when invited, were allowed their right to choose not to. Few did, but Prowl wasn't entirely alone in her choice of abstention.

True to her word, Jazz never approached Prowl again with that kind of offer. More curiously, neither did any of the other ops agents. Prowl wondered if Jazz had warned them off as a courtesy. Over time, though, they did become friends of a sort, and once in a while spent a quiet evening listening to music and playing tech-chess. Once in a while, though, Prowl would become aware anew of Jazz's magneticism, of how she felt drawn to the other femme, and it terrified her. Jazz, maybe understanding better than she ought to have, would just look at Prowl with an inscrutable smile, and make her apologies, leaving for the evening.

* * *

On Earth, Jazz went from femme to femme like an bee flew from flower to flower. The bee got the materials for honey out of the deal; the flower, pollen. What Jazz and the others got out of it, Prowl was not sure. Actually, that wasn't true; she knew what the others got out of it. There was the pleasure of energetic and emotional release, the comfort of shared time with one of the Ark's most dexterous, desired femmes, and the knowledge of being cared for, being valued by Jazz. Gears' complaints lessened for a while afterward; Ironhide felt a bit younger; the stress of leadership rested less heavily for a time on Prime's shoulders.

So, whatever Jazz did, she was good at. She wasn't the only one who did it, of course, but Prowl's processors never really caught on Mirage or Bumblebee's activities as much as they did on the black-and-white's. Perhaps it was because they were more discreet; elegant Mirage barely so much as hinted at her liaisons, while cute Bumblebee was so friendly with everyone that it was hard to tell when she was going to someone's quarters to play a video game, and when she was going for other purposes.

Spike once asked Jazz once why they did what they did, and Prowl was listening as the human boy got an unexpectedly serious answer. Jazz leaned back against the mountainside, looking up at the summer stars on this world which had no Decepticon spy satellites to watch them back. "It makes people feel better, sharing themselves," she answered. "Ratchet doesn't break down because she can share what it felt like to almost lose someone. Red Alert can rest a little easier, knowing that the whole Ark isn't going to mutiny on her. Bluestreak hurts a little less, knowing that someone will remember her if she's gone."

Spike nodded, looking up at the stars himself. "So you guys don't do it for your own sakes, then," he commented.

Jazz went contemplative for a moment. "Depends on what you mean," she said finally. "If you mean, do I spend time with them because I care about everyone and want to help them, then yeah, it's for myself. If you mean do I do it because it feels good..." She gave a faint laugh. "I guess the Earth word for that would be 'slut,' wouldn't it?" she asked. She shook her head. "I won't deny that being the 'Porsche filling in a Lamborghini sandwich' isn't one of the nicest things ever," she said, unintentionally causing a short in Prowl's CPU as she processed the image of Jazz with the statuesque twins, "but I don't do it because it physically feels good, Spike. None of us do. It's... spark-to-spark connections that last a lifetime. Everyone I've ever been with, they're a part of me. And I'm a part of them."

Thoughtful, the human nodded. "We have something a little like that," he mused. "There's a human saying that as long as someone is remembered, they're never really gone."

* * *

Jazz waited until after Spike had gone into the Ark, to his own berth for the night, before getting up and moving closer to Prowl.

"You really shouldn't be telling him those things," the shapely tactician said quietly, not looking away from the stars. She was probably trying to figure out where Cybertron was located relative to Earth. "The humans' customs are very different from ours."

Jazz rolled her optics behind her visor. "Prowl, the kid lives here. If he hasn't noticed by now what Mirage, Bumblebee, and I do..."

"Ah." There was a note of dry humor in the tactician's voice and the faintest sardonic smile on her lips. "He walked in on one of you, did he?"

"Bumblebee and Windcharger," Jazz admitted. "To hear them tell it, he got an eyeful. And, well... mechs are mechs, human or transformer." She laughed softly.

"Bumblebee's going to have to deal with his crush sooner or later," Prowl said softly.

"Let Bumblebee handle that," Jazz said. "She knows about it, and she can deal with it." She waited a minute as Prowl nodded, then said softly, "So, since you know why I do it... why don't you?"

As expected, Prowl stiffened. "I don't believe that's relevant," Prowl said, and started to get up.

Jazz caught the tactician's arm and didn't let her go. "Hey, I'm not about to force you," she said. "Have I _ever_ tried that? I'm not into fear. I'm just... curious," she admitted. "You're the only 'hands off' in this entire crew, and I've never figured out why you don't like it."

"It's not a matter of liking," Prowl said quietly, not looking at Jazz. "It's a matter of being able to afford to."

Reasonably sure Prowl wasn't going to run out on the conversation, Jazz let her go and Prowl gracelessly sat back down, still not looking at Jazz. "Affording?" Jazz asked after a minute.

"I can't afford to lose focus," Prowl said bluntly. "I do, and people will die."

That couldn't be all of it, or Prowl wouldn't be so defensive. "You're scared," Jazz said, enlightened.

"Scared that people will die?" Prowl asked. "Of course I am."

"No, not that," Jazz disagreed, shaking her head. "You're scared to give yourself away." It made sense, with how private Prowl was. "Especially to someone who can't commit to you alone. No wonder you're always so worked up!"

"I am not worked up," Prowl snapped. "Red Alert is worked up."

"Nah," Jazz disagreed airily, scooting a little closer to the Ark's second-in-command. "Red's just paranoid. She can actually be very, very relaxed once you get her mind off things..."

"I don't want to know."

"No," Jazz disagreed with a smile, sure of herself. "I think you do. I think you want to know things like that very, very badly, but won't let yourself." She ran fingers slowly down Prowl's arm, curling her fingers into the other femme's. She leaned in closer, breathing her next words against Prowl's cheek as the tactician stubbornly refused to look at her. "You worry too much, Prowler. Our humans aren't going to betray us, and I'm not going to touch you until you want me to, and giving yourself away only means you get everything in return." They were so close she could feel Prowl's energy field buzzing against her, humming with millions of years' worth of repressed want. Jazz brushed her lips softly against Prowl's cheek and stood, walking away.

She was absolutely not going to make a move on Prowl until the tactician wanted it enough to ask. Jazz had waited this long, she could wait until the time was right.

* * *

It was a long-standing Special Ops tradition to keep score whenever captured by Decepticons. Points were awarded for destruction wreaked upon Decepticons bases, transports, and technology, and of course, upon Decepticons themselves. Deductions were taken for needing rescue or ransom, and for any damage incurred to oneself or fellow Autobots. Bonus points were awarded on a sliding scale of usefulness for any intelligence extracted from the 'Cons while prisoner. Though Bumblebee currently held the highest total score of the Ark 'bots, Jazz ranked highest on intel gathering.

"Four?" Mirage protested. "You were only there for seven and a quarter hours!"

Jazz buffed her fingertips on her hood and held them up to faux-examine the shine, counting coup. "If you got it, you got it," she said, smirking. "And for future reference? Skywarp and Thundercracker are bonded."

Optimus raised an optic ridge. "Do I want to ask?"

Jazz shrugged. "Double-team," she replied succinctly, and ignored the way Prowl's fingers tightened slightly on her datapad. "Unfortunately, Megatron is too smart to go anywhere near touching prisoners, Screamer's too paranoid, and Soundwave too cautious. No way of getting info out of the heads of the hydra."

Optimus sighed, resting her head in a hand. "At least we know now what they're up to in Libya," she said. "Prowl, options?"

"Well, we could always turn over the data to the human authorities and let them deal with it," Prowl began. "The Libyan cooperation violates the Terran pact of non-compliance toward Decepticon terrorism. Unfortunately, the humans would probably want to know how we acquired the information, and human casualties would also likely be high. I recommend we either deal with the problem ourselves, or, ideally for the matter of goodwill and public relations, work in a joint effort with the humans."

Her way of getting information out of the Decepticons had always annoyed Prowl, Jazz thought, listening. She didn't understand why... info was info, and was it really any better to beat it out of the 'Cons than to pluck it out of their sparks in a more pleasurable way? Not to mention, the chance to play head games with Megatron's lackeys was always fun. It didn't make _her_ any less likely to shoot Astrotrain or Swindle in battle, but it did mean that _they_ might hesitate.

Prowl was too _smart_ to just be mistaking spark-sharing for affection, though, Jazz thought.

* * *

"You _want_ her," Bumblebee said later, grinning, as they discussed this and that over a couple cubes of energon.

"Of course I do," Jazz replied, leaning back. "That's never been a secret. I'm just not going to make a move until she decides she wants me to. I'm being a _gentlefemme_ about this."

"Heh." Bumblebee swirled her energon around in its cube. "My bet?" the smaller femme said, looking at Jazz. "Prowl's old-fashioned. She wants a one-and-only."

Jazz blinked, then slapped her hand over her visor. "You're right," she groaned. "That's got to be it."

"Sorry," Bumblebee apologized, sipping at her drink. "You fell for someone with the exact opposite mindset as us."

"'Least I didn't fall for someone from another species," Jazz said softly, straightening. She stared moodily into her drink.

"To losers in love?" Bumblebee suggested, raising her cube in salute.

"Losers in love," Jazz agreed, touching their cubes together before they both downed the remaining contents.

"The two of you are so depressing," Mirage opined, joining them at the table. "Look at it this way: all these lovely femmes to spend time with." Her gesture included the rest of the cantina and, by extension, the whole Ark as well. "What more could you want?"

Bumblebee and Jazz exchanged a look. "The one you can't have," Jazz dryly replied.

"Why not?" Mirage asked calmly.

"Because I'm in slagging _Ops_ is why, Mirage," Jazz snapped. "Keeping an eye on things is what we _do_, remember?"

"Doesn't have to be," Mirage replied, sipping at her energon. She looked sideways at Jazz. "Not everyone coming out of Academy chose the domestic control route in addition to the espionage route."

Jazz's processors stuttered.

To be _alone_ like that... to be able to look, but never to touch. To watch all her friends turning to others with their spark-knotting problems, or to have no one to turn to at all. To have only one person share a life with her, with no guarantee that Prowl wouldn't someday find her charms paled, and look to another. To have no one else to share herself with, her joy of life. To have no one else remember her when she was gone...

The thought horrified her. She couldn't imagine that kind of pale, washed-out life. It made her want to throw Bumblebee down on the floor of the cantina and spark-share with her right then and there, in front of everyone.

"That kind of life scares you," Mirage observed. She set her cube down, long, elegant fingers tracing around its edges. "My advice, Jazz? Forget you want Prowl. What she wants and what you want aren't compatible. Let her be an ice queen; you can't make her happy without making yourself miserable and killing off everything you are. And that's no kind of love."

* * *

"You know," Spike said a few years later, sitting in Jazz's driver's seat while the two of them were on the way back from running some errands in Portland, mostly picking up (stable, thank Primus) chemical compounds for Wheeljack, "sometimes humans mistake one thing for another."

"Oh?" Jazz inquired, not sure where Spike was going with his non sequitur. "More than mistaking an Autobot for a car?"

"Ha! Much more than that," Spike said. "Sometimes humans mistake sex for love." He left the implications hanging.

"You and Carly and Bumblebee having problems?" Jazz asked, not wanting to talk about what she was pretty sure Spike was talking about.

"We're fine, Jazz," Spike answered him. The interspecies relationship was something none of the involved parties talked about easily... not even Bumblebee, which had surprised Jazz. She wouldn't have thought that 'Bee would be shy about it, and she knew the small spy was most definitely not _ashamed_ of it... "You know, if you don't talk with Prowl, she's never going to realize that--"

Jazz revved her engine, cutting Spike off. "We talked," she replied shortly.

"Bumblebee says you didn't," Spike responded.

"Prowl wants something I can't give," Jazz told the human.

"Did she say that?" Spike asked her.

"...No," Jazz admitted as they pulled off the 5 freeway and onto the paved road that led to the Ark.

"Then talk to Prowl," Spike urged. "What've you got to lose, Jazz?"

It took a few minutes before Jazz could formulate an answer, and by that time they were already back at the Ark. She shrugged her driver's door and hood open, and answered Spike as he unfastened his seatbelt. "Hope," she said quietly.

"You can't live in fear forever, Jazz," Spike replied equally quietly, and got out.

* * *

Stupid o'clock eventually found Jazz sitting on her berth, avoiding recharge via the cube held in her hand. The Lamborghini sisters brewed the best high-grade, she thought, sipping at it, and definitely knew how to market it, much to the regret of more staid 'bots. She was currently consuming "Angst with a Dash of Guilt and a Large Portion of Heartache Stirred In." It was smooth and slick and wouldn't knock a femme out on her aft in a few minutes like some of their other concoctions did. No, this varietal was guaranteed to keep her up for hours, then send her sobbing into recharge a few minutes before she was due to get up anyway.

_Slaggit,_ she decided, and subspaced the remainder of the cube. _If I'm going to be acting stupid over that femme, I might as well go all the way._ And even as her door opened and she made her way down night-dimmed halls to the command deck where she _knew_ Prowl had night watch, she wondered if it was the high-grade making her brave. But frankly, she was beyond the point of caring, sick of wanting the one femme she couldn't touch, by her own rules.

And Prowl, beautiful, perfect Prowl sat alone at one of the workstations. "You know, Prowler," Jazz announced as she entered the room, making Prowl look up from the display, "there's any number of reasons we could never make a relationship work. You're terrified of being intimate with anyone. You'd want me to be yours and yours alone. I can't stand the thought of being limited like that. Therefore," she said, reaching Prowl's workstation and leaning forward across it, "give me a reason why I shouldn't just forget even trying."

"You've been at the high-grade, haven't you?" Prowl inquired.

Jazz waved off the accurate accusation. "Not the point," she insisted. "Tell me, Prowl, is there any good reason I should be getting energized on your account?"

Prowl just looked at her, cool, logical mind no doubt whirring away to the conclusion that there was none: just the illogical desire that made them want one another. "No," she said finally. "There isn't."

Jazz stared at her for a minute, then closed her optics behind the visor, letting go of hope. It winged off, and it felt a little like heartbreak. "That's that, then," she said quietly, and turned to go back to her bunk.

She had no way of knowing that Prowl's optics followed her across the room as she left the deck.

* * *

Jazz threw herself into her social work with a will; she sparkled, she shone, she was the life of the party, and every femme onboard wanted her. The recharge berth in her quarters became used so rarely that it actually accumulated dust. Her wild, fey behavior didn't go unnoticed by all, though, and more than a few pairs of eyes and optics watched her in worry. Only a few of them, though, were able to assign the source of her behavior to the right individual. And seeing Prowl watching Jazz as well, they decided to stay out of it until something drastic happened.

Unfortunately, with the way war and battles tended to go, that didn't take long, and it only took one Seeker missile, courtesy of Starscream, for Jazz to end up severely damaged in the medbay. Spike happened to be on monitor duty when Prowl came in to check on the recuperating injured. She worked her way down the row of berths, and came to a silent stop when she came to the foot of the last, Jazz's. Her face betrayed nothing.

Spike frowned. Even though he knew it wasn't, he couldn't help feeling that the situation was at least partly his fault. "You know, Prowl," he spoke up softly, "humans have a saying about 'it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all'." When the Autobot turned to regard him, he smiled a little, sticking his hands in his jeans pockets. "If Jazz had died," he clarified his train of thought, "what would you regret more? Having taken the chance... or not having?"

Prowl's mouth was open slightly, like she didn't know quite how to reply. "I... thank you for the thought, Spike," she said quietly, and left.

Spike watched her go, uncertain whether he'd done more good than harm. But... he couldn't have just left things the way they were. It wasn't right.

* * *

The general opinion around the Ark was that Ratchet was the most brilliant medic ever, though First Aid showed promise too. Jazz was not one to argue with that popular opinion as she celebrated full recovery with a run along the sunny roads of Oregon. She was feeling so good that not even a cop car on her tail flashing its lights and sounding its sirens could dent her mood... and not even the realization of who that police cruiser really was.

"Catch me if you can, Prowler," she called back gleefully, and poured on the speed.

A few hours later, Jazz lay on the grass of one of the clearings near the Ark, panting with pleased exertion. It had been one heck of a chase, and Prowl had resorted to a few dirty tricks she hadn't even _known_ the femme had in her bag to try to catch Jazz. She hadn't, but it had been a close thing.

A shadow fell over Jazz, door-wings spread wide, and the 2IC leaned down and flicked Jazz on the forehead. "Tag," she said simply, before sitting down next to Jazz.

There was silence for a minute before Prowl added contemplatively, "You could outrun a Stunticon."

Jazz snorted. "Those sets of wheels are all speed and no strategy."

"So you were listening when I gave briefings, then." Prowl was silent for a minute more, then said quietly, "Spike reminded me of something while you were convalescing."

Jazz cracked an optic open behind her visor. "Oh...?" she asked cautiously.

"Relationships are a matter of give and take," Prowl said quietly. "If it came down to it and either of us was terminated, Jazz... I would far rather have spent time with you than not."

Jazz sat up slowly, both optics wide open now. "What're you saying, Prowler?" she asked.

Prowl took a breath, seemingly trying to steady herself. "I... will work around the distraction," she said, "and do the best I can to keep us all safe. I will... give myself away to you, if that's what you want."

"Prowl," Jazz said softly, stunned. "I... I can't give up everyone else," she confessed. "Not now. Maybe not until this war is over. Maybe not ever..."

Prowl nodded, not meeting Jazz's gaze. "I understand. There are too few with your skills."

"No," Jazz said, catching the delicate gray chin and forcing Prowl to look at her. "It's not because I want it," she said. "I'm scared of being alone, I'll admit that. But this is something everyone else needs too. What I do, it's kind of like a glue. It helps hold this unit together. And I can't put that kind of stress on Mirage and Bumblebee, not with Bumblebee having her thing with Spike and Carly too--"

Prowl placed a finger on Jazz's mouth, silencing her. "You've been associating with humans too much," she said. "You're assuming I care about... monogamy."

Jazz blinked, a little confused. "Don't you?"

Prowl smiled just a little, secret and shy and sweet. "No."

Things rearranged themselves in her CPU, and Jazz smiled back. "Humans have a saying that love and sex aren't the same thing," she quipped, sitting up and stretching out to caress the edges of Prowl's doorwings. "Would you like me to show you the difference... would you let me make love with you, Prowl?" Sweet, sweet overload, and giving everything of herself to the other femme... The thought hummed enticingly through Jazz.

Prowl trembled finely, apparently just the light touch on her doorwings enough to set her engine racing. "Yes," she breathed.

Jazz leaned over her until Prowl fell back onto the ground. She trapped the slightly taller femme under her body and moved in close enough to feel their energy fields flaring and snapping, trying to fall into sync. "If I asked if I could kiss you, would you say no?" she whispered.

"No," Prowl said, shaking her head slightly.

"Not scared?" Jazz asked for the last time.

"Terrified," Prowl confessed, but with light in her optics and a smile on her lips. "Touch me anyway," she invited.

Jazz did.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

_Apparently I specialize in crack. Which is not a surprise. This is my entry for prompt #5, "Fear," at the October challenge at the ProwlxJazz livejournal community. Somewhere in the back of my brain I ended up having this (feminist) wondering of how and if Transformers might've been different if this crew of ancient giant alien robots that woke up in 1984 to continue a war that had been put on hold for four million years had been _female_. So, as an experiment, I genderswapped 'em all. This was originally to see what kind of (1) social difference it would make in the universe, (2) if it would make me as the author view the characters any differently because they were a different sex, and (3) to let the reader/audience ponder their own preconceptions as well._

_Except then Prowl started having UST all over the place, the joke about the real meaning of Special Ops became somewhat less of a joke (though I think the three on the Ark are rather a bit more dedicated than most of Ops... they're all the hand-picked creme de la creme for the energon search expedition, after all), and it all just went downhill from there. Only one thing I ended up unable to work in, though, (alas)... the (naughty) origin of the nickname "Screamer" for Starscream. Ah well. Maybe next fic._

_This story probably ends up owing rather a lot to Lyricality's excellent '07 movie 'verse story "Seven Days" and a nod as well to Okamimyrrhibis' G1 story "No Time for Love", which made me ponder pairings and threesomes. They're both good reads and I recommend them. In any case, I hope you enjoyed!_


	2. Chapter 2

**Electronic Coupling, part 2**  
by K. Stonham  
first released 13th September, 2011

From the first moment Carly had heard of them, she'd been fascinated by the Autobots. Part of it was her engineering bent-an entire species of real, live _robots_! She wanted nothing more than to figure out how they worked and what their tech was like. Part of it was the fact that she was a sci-fi fan; Star Wars had hooked her on the idea of life on other planets, and here it was on hers! But a major part of her interest in the aliens, she had to admit, was that they were women.

Giant, alien, robotic _women_ warriors and leaders and scientists. And no one gave them crap for being women, or told them that something was beyond their understanding, or that girls didn't study certain subjects...

She'd wanted, with all her heart, nothing more than to meet them and maybe, maybe, in the back corner of her dreams and wishes and hopes where she stuffed everything she thought would never really happen, maybe she could learn from them and be as awesome as they were.

Because after seeing Reagan on TV gingerly shaking the hand of Optimus Prime, and seeing 8 o'clock news footage of Prowl co-ordinating a human/Autobot military attack on Decepticons...

The robotic women ("femmes," they called themselves) from outer space could do _anything_ they set their minds to. And Carly, and any number of other girls she knew, were not going to be left behind.

* * *

Carly let the doors to the washracks slide closed behind her with a sigh. It had been a very long day calibrating the auto-defense targeting system for Autobot City, and she wanted nothing more than a long soak in some hot water.

And she loved Spike dearly, but sometimes it was just nice to be able to foist their five-year-old son off onto him and Sparkplug, letting the men order pizza and watch football or monster truck rallies or whatever it was they did, while she went off and bonded with her girlfriends.

The door slid open behind her. "Good evening, Carly," Prowl said politely as Carly moved out of the way.

"Hey, Prowl," she replied. Carly walked over to the cubby set into the wall, out of direct line of sight of the door, and started stripping. The cubby had been added just for her, as the other femmes of the Ark tended to go around either fully armored even in the baths... or go around wearing nothing more than body paint at all times, depending on how one looked at the matter. "How was your day?" she called as the black-and-white headed for the acid showers, one section Carly kept well clear of.

"Frustrating," the tactician replied. "The twins and Jazz are in the brig again. Separate cells," she added.

Tucking her shoes under the bundle of clothing, Carly grabbed her towel and caddy and headed for the water shower on the opposite wall. "All three of them?" she asked. "Are we talking a brawl, or a prank?"

"A combination thereof. Sunstreaker didn't take the prank well."

Carly winced.

It must be tough, she thought, ducking her head under the spray, to have to discipline your own lover like that. It was fortunately something that had never come up between Bumblebee and Spike and her, with the weird sideways heirarchy of where human allies fit into the Autobot military structure. Even with Bee being 3IC of the Special Operations division, the femme didn't have any disciplinary ranking over her human lovers. "Jazz pissed at you?"

"Not as such," Prowl replied, fluttering her wings under the mild spray to get them clean. "More... disappointed that the prank didn't work out as planned." Carly laughed, working shampoo into her hair. "And your day, Carly?" Prowl added.

"Meh. Some days I want to take Ratchet's option and just hit it all with a wrench until it works," she said. "We've tracked down a few bugs; give us another five days and we might have a working system." Tech integration of human and Cybertronian systems was always a bitch. But each had some advantages over the other, and combining them had more than once given the Autobots the advantage over the Decepticons.

"We are, as always, appreciative of your efforts," Prowl told her.

Carly ducked and rinsed, then stood back up straight, flinging sloppy-wet hair out of her face. "Where else," she asked Prowl seriously, "would I ever get the chance to do what I do here?"

Prowl just shook her head. "Your species is improving its views on gender parity in a remarkably short period of time." Sped up, Carly thought, by the presence of solid metal awesome alien femmes. "Someday all young women will have the opportunities you do. It is merely a matter of time."

* * *

**Author's Note:** Flybystardancer asked, in a LJ meme, for a ficlet about what happened one month after Electronic Coupling. Unfortunately my muses seemed to have exhausted their P/J thoughts for the universe and I was stymied. After a while, I turned my thoughts to the original purpose of writing the story, which was exploring gender preconceptions, and realized there was lots of material in how the Autobots being female would serve as inspiration to a whole generation of young women in the '80s, and thus Carly became my focal character. Fortunately Flybystardancer didn't seem to mind the result probably not being what she had actually asked for. ^_^


End file.
